


Shadow Wings

by Ellessey



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dreams, Friendship, Inspired by Studio Ghibli, M/M, Shapeshifting, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 18:28:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10904976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellessey/pseuds/Ellessey
Summary: “Ishe a crow?” Daichi asks after a few beats.“In a way,” Suga says. “But I think he’s something else, too.”Daichi doesn’t say anything, he just lifts his hand and watches the water fall slowly from his fingertips. Each drop catches the light, just like it would in life, and Suga wonders how his dreams can feel so real, and his days can be like dreams.--Nothing could feel farther from Suga’s old seaside house than living at the edge of the busy city. But the forest nearby welcomes him, and it’s there Suga finds a home.





	Shadow Wings

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the HQ Ghibli Zine. The zine will unfortunately no longer be happening in the capacity it was intended, but! we can all still share our creations! I was lucky to collaborate with Jeanne, who illustrated this story so beautifully I still haven't quite gotten over it. Please check out her art [here](http://jeananasartblog.tumblr.com/post/160616384617/my-piece-for-the-hq-ghibli-zine-will-update-when).

The first time Suga sees it, he thinks it’s only a shadow.

They’ve just arrived in their new home. His parents and sister are busy inside, sweeping away cobwebs, kicking up dust so thick it must have been collecting for years. Suga has done his part, carrying in boxes and edging furniture into just the right places under his mother’s watchful eye, but he doesn’t want to be there any longer than necessary. Trapped in this old house on the outskirts of the city, with a school somewhere in its center where Suga will begin his first year of high school among strangers.

He trots down the sagging wooden steps at the back of the house and takes off at a run, tripping over the roots in his path, until finally he’s surrounded by trees, brown and bare still, as Spring begins to stretch its arms and think about all the work it has to do.

The ground is cool and rough when Suga kneels down to catch his breath, to find his bearings. He cries there, just this once, for the town they’ve left behind. The little seaside cottages, and the friends he grew up with. The fishing accident that made his father reliant on a cane and a job in the city, and his mother’s relief when they’d told Suga and his sister the news, because there would be no more worrying about him every time he was gone anymore.

Suga’s breath shudders out of him. He lifts his face to the blue of the sky and the crisscrossing lines of branches waiting to bloom, and he knows she was right. That it’s so much better to be here— _here_ especially, out of the city, even if they’ll have to work and study there—than to be back at home and have another accident happen. One that could leave them a family of three instead of four.

He gets to his feet to begin the walk back, and that’s when he sees it, that flash of black over the dry earth. He hears the catch of something in the air, swept away a moment later as the breeze shifts, and the sun falls warm on the back of his neck.

It’s curious though, because Suga could swear that in that brief moment the shadow touched him, he’d felt even warmer than when it fell away.

The second time it appears, two days later, it lingers, curls and stretches, and Suga hears it again, that sound like an inhalation of surprise. He looks up just in time to see it in stark relief against the pale sky. A bird so big he isn't sure it’s real, black and bright all at once. It flaps its enormous wings, and Suga feels like air warmed by the brush of inky feathers has made its way right to his skin.

That night he dreams of a boy with eyes so dark he can’t understand how they can be so warm. His voice is rich and full, like the rush of deep water, and Suga can still hear it in his head when he awakens in his quiet room.

*

It takes a week for the sprawling, creaking house to start to feel something like home, with the familiar artwork hung, and the scent of his mother’s cooking settling in the air. She keeps urging Suga to go into the city, but he doesn’t need to. There is no one there he knows, so he goes into the woods instead.

She’s afraid that he’s lonely, but he’s not really alone. The leaves are starting to unfurl, the air busy with sounds of life, buzzing and chittering, and there’s the shadow. The black bird that he spots more and more frequently. Always swooping away when Suga tries to get closer to it, then circling back. Staying just nearby enough that Suga knows it’s there, that he feels safer for its presence.

And there’s also the boy. The one in his dreams, night after night, sitting beside Suga on the rocky coast near his old home, or under the trees near his new one, listening to him talk. Smiling, laughing with his eyes closed, his golden skin warm under a sun so real, it’s jarring every time Suga wakes to find the sky barely beginning to lighten.

Suga wishes he could talk to him during the day, too. Sometimes he does, in his head, but the only answer he gets is the deep tone of a remembered voice, harder to grasp onto the further from sleep he gets. He feels it throughout the day, tugging at him, like there should be some way to get back to it, but he can’t. When his eyes are open it’s only him, and the city to the south, the forest to the north. So he goes north, and he feels that other itch, telling him the bird is near.

The bird, at least, is real. Suga wonders if maybe, if he could really see it, he wouldn’t feel so unsettled when he thinks about the only company he has, and the fact that he doesn’t really _have_ it.

He follows it, at the end of that first week. It soars over him and he goes with it, jogging at first, then running flat out. Muscles burning and breath coming harsh and fast as he darts between the trees, only stopping when he realizes just how far he’s gone. All the way through the woods to where the mountains begin to rise. The bird is out of sight, but Suga can’t bring himself to stop. Not when he’s so close to easing the restlessness that has been rattling inside him.

He scrabbles up the steep slope in front of him, slipping when it becomes hard and smooth, digging the toes of his shoes in as he stretches up for the little notch in the rock above him. He tries to launch himself towards it, but his feet slip uselessly against the stone, knees slamming into it. And then he’s falling, falling—heart in his throat because he climbed too high, entirely focused on knowing for certain that the crow is flesh and blood, not another figment of his imagination.

But when the air leaves his lungs it’s not from his back hitting the ground. It’s from being lifted up so suddenly that the surprise of it, the impossible sensation of flying instead of falling, takes his breath away.

Black talons readjust around his upper arms as the ground slips farther away, and he is weightless, warm and euphoric, blinking into the light when he looks up to try to see what holds him. All he can make out is bright blue behind black so deep, it’s like the sky has been cut away in the shape of a bird above him.

He’s set down close to the southern side of the forest, his house just visible through the trees when he looks over his shoulder. And when he turns back, the bird is there, and it _is_ real, it must be. It’s flesh and blood, just like he hoped, but at the same time it is just as much a thing of dreams as the dark-eyed boy.

It has the pitch black feathers and fan-shaped tail of a crow, but it’s _huge._ So much larger than Suga ever realized when he saw it from a distance. When it lifts its wings, they reach at least four feet on each side, and the light catching on the gleaming feathers brings out not just the purple hue of the crows Suga has seen before, but every color of the rainbow—deep greens and blues and reds, gleaming, shifting, almost glowing. It’s hypnotic, watching the colors dance, watching the light slide with each small movement the bird makes. Then it turns its head and Suga meets one glittering black eye, an entire universe scattered with stars, and he wonders if he’ll ever get his breath back.

“What _are_ you?” he asks.

The bird blinks, and Suga rises on his knees.

“Karasu?” he tries, earning him another blink, and a tilt of the bird’s head. “Yes?” The bird twitches and Suga has no idea if anything it’s doing is a response to what he’s said, but he can’t stop trying. “Well...if you want me to call you something else, you tell me,” he says, and the bird responds with a rumble in its throat that sounds so intentional Suga laughs with delight. “Karasu,” he says again. “Thank you...for helping me.”

The bird bobs its head, and Suga does not care that he’s sitting in the forest talking to a giant crow. He spends every night talking to a boy who doesn’t exist, but this bird—this being, whatever it is—is right here in front of him. It doesn’t move when he reaches a hand out towards it, does nothing but close its eyes when he presses his palm to its proud chest, and his mouth falls open at the feel of it. So sleek, it’s like liquid against his skin.

“ _Are_ you real?” he asks. “Or did I actually fall and crack my head open?”

The crow’s eyes open again, and it shifts around in agitation before darting in, nudging at Suga’s hair, and then his arms and sides with its huge, black beak, carefully inspecting him.

“What are you...I’m fine, I’m fine, that _tickles,”_ Suga laughs. The bird prods him again, gently, and Suga runs his hand over the smooth curve of its beak. “I’m okay...you didn’t let me get broken.”

There’s another sound, a squawking little caw, and Suga is almost certain that the bird nods.

“This is crazy,” he says.

The crow lifts its wings slightly, a feathery shrug.

“I’m crazy,” Suga amends.

The crow settles into the dry grass and Suga sits close enough to it that he can feel the brush of silken feathers on his bare arm, and he doesn’t care what any of this means about his sanity. He’s warm, and safe, and the sun is directly overhead now, painting rainbows all over the creature beside him that _does_ exist, whether or not it should.

*

“So you just call him Karasu?” the boy asks in Suga’s dream. His name is Daichi, Suga knows now. Suga was almost sad to learn it, to know that he’ll never have cause to say it outside of his sleep.

“He hasn’t asked me to do otherwise,” Suga tells him with a crooked smile, and the boy reaches over to ruffle his hair. “I don’t even know that it’s a _he.”_

“Of course he is,” Daichi says, stretching tanned legs out in front of him, so his bare feet reach the gently rising tide of the shoreline Suga traced with his footprints as a child.

“How do _you_ know?”

“Well, doesn’t he feel like one?”

Suga laughs and flicks a bit of cold water at Daichi. “I guess he does. Do you think he has a real name? _Do_ crows have names?”

Daichi shrugs and dips his fingers in the water, too, but he doesn’t splash Suga. He just watches his own hand pressing into the gritty sand, fingers spread wide. “ _Is_ he a crow?” he asks after a few beats.

“In a way,” Suga says. “But I think he’s something else, too.”

Daichi doesn’t say anything, he just lifts his hand and watches the water fall slowly from his fingertips. Each drop catches the light, just like it would in life, and Suga wonders how his dreams can feel so real, and his days can be like dreams.

*

“Karasu...” Suga says.

He’s lying on his back on a soft blanket, stretched out with the clouds streaking above him, and the crow perched on a nearby tree stump. It caws softly in response, and Suga props himself up on his elbows to see it better. It’s been almost three weeks of rambling days with the crow soaring over him as he walks, or sitting next to him while Suga talks or sings or doesn’t do anything at all, is simply happy, because he’s not alone. And instead of feeling small and weak beside the powerful bird, he always feels strong with it nearby.

“You’re too far away,” Suga tells it, and then watches it shift from foot to foot a few times, as if it’s deliberating, before it hops over to stand right next to him. “You didn’t _have_ to come,” he teases. “Don’t let me monopolize your time.”

The crow makes that clicking, rumbling sound in its throat, the one Suga has decided is definitely the laughter of an oversized bird, and swishes its wing at Suga.

“Well, what do I know? Maybe you have all kinds of important things to be doing.” He gets flicked again, an immense, blunt wingtip almost knocking him over. He laughs and flicks back, letting his fingers glide over warm feathers after. “What _do_ you do all day, when you’re not with me?” The crow cocks its head, then bumps it into Suga, nuzzling him. “You miss me?” Suga guesses, smiling, and then biting his lip when he thinks of how much he’ll miss Karasu, too, when this weekend passes. “I have to go soon, you know. School starts Monday...I’ll be in the city all day.”

His words are met by a distinctly unhappy flutter of wings.

“I know, I don’t like it either. I’d ask you to come with me, but you’d hate it there. Not enough trees. Just a bunch of desks and crowded rooms. You’re way too big, anyway.”

The crow puffs itself up, stretches its wings and knocks Suga to his back again, flapping obnoxiously until Suga is laughing and pushing him away.

“Yeah...just like that. You’d be a menace,” he tells the bird, and it settles down in defiance of his words, preening its feathers quietly. Suga sighs, watching it. Longing to be able to take the peace he feels with the crow beside him into the city.

“It’d be so nice though,” he says. “If you could come with me.”

The crow cards its beak through Suga’s hair, as if it’s saying it would like that too, and Suga smiles and smooths his hand over the sleek length of its neck. He feels infinitely better when Karasu is close like this, but he knows these moments will soon be few and far between.

“I wish you could…” Suga reaches to run his hand over the crow’s beak, but it lifts its head suddenly, shifting its feet, wings twitching with agitation.

“What is it?” Suga asks. He tries to touch it again, to soothe it, but it’s so restless suddenly, almost dancing on the spot. “Stop it, dummy, you’re gonna scratch me.”

The crow turns an eye on him, wide and so, so deep, and it’s like it’s _waiting_ , but Suga doesn’t know what for.

“Are you finished?” he asks, and the crow flops to the ground, utterly dejected. Such a majestic creature, peering up at him balefully from the bright green grass. Spring has made itself at home, right when Suga has to trade in these days of lazy exploration for hours on end in a cold, brick building.

In spite of the sadness that wells up inside him, he laughs softly at the sight of the crow and strokes its head. “I’m _sorry..._ I don’t know what you want.” Karasu blinks at him, and Suga sighs again. His friend always seems to understand what he’s saying, but sometimes Suga doesn’t have the slightest idea what thoughts are spinning behind the bird’s black eyes. “I wish you could talk to me,” he says, and Karasu’s head lifts in response. “I wish...”

The crow is on its feet again in an instant, the sudden movement of its wings almost knocking Suga to his back once more. It nods its head, feathers rippling with something that seems like anticipation. But for _what?_

If only Suga could understand it. If only there wasn’t this distance between himself and the two friends he wants to be closest to. The boy who lives only in his dreams, and the crow that belongs here in the forest, that can’t _talk_ to him, can’t be part of the world he has to live in.

“ _God,”_ he says, pressing both palms to the ground. “I wish you were human.”

Suga’s eyes are closed, pinched in frustration, but he hears the air move, feels it lift his hair, and he looks up to see the crow rising, wings spread wide, but not flapping. He watches patches of rainbows growing and reflecting and leaping, so Suga’s eyes are darting between all the colors and all the light, and he almost doesn’t see it at first, the way feathers are drifting down to the earth. The way the form underneath this sudden flurry of luminescence is shifting, lengthening. Deep black kissed by the light until it glimmers a soft brown, glowing so brightly Suga has to look away.

When the light has faded, when Suga blinks the sun spots from his eyes, there’s a blanket of glossy feathers at his feet, and a boy standing in front of him, bare and golden. His arms outstretched, and his face tipped up to the sky.

“Daichi,” Suga says.

The boy lowers his arms and faces Suga. He opens his eyes, depthless and familiar, and he smiles.

“You did it,” he says.

Suga shakes his head, a question on his lips that he doesn’t know the words to. “What…”

“I was trapped,” Daichi tells him. “I used to be able to move between forms, but I was angry and lonely as a human and I...I wished I didn’t have to be one.”

“When?” Suga asks, though the more pertinent question would probably be _how?_

“Two years ago,” Daichi says. “I didn’t know how to change back. I didn’t know if I wanted to, but then you... _you_ were here, and I _felt_ you, and…”

Suga still feels a little blinded, even though the light in the woods is soft and muted again. “You...felt me?”

Daichi nods, and then a pink flush spreads across wide, strong cheekbones, and both of them look down.

“Here,” Suga says, gathering up the blanket from the ground and holding it out to Daichi, keeping his eyes averted until the other boy has wrapped it around himself.

“I could...feel what you felt,” Daichi explains, and Suga looks up at him again. “I could see your dreams.”

“You _were_ my dreams,” Suga says.

Daichi nods. “I’m a shapeshifter. A crow spirit.”

“Bakemono,” Suga says, remembering the old folktales of body changers, kitsune and tanuki. In the stories they were often terrifying, transforming into faceless monsters, but this isn’t a story. The filtered sun is warm on Suga’s face, the earth solid under his feet, and this is real.

“Something like that,” Daichi says. “My spirit could talk to you, to your spirit, at night, but I couldn’t _tell_ you.”

Suga nods, thinking that Daichi shouldn’t have needed to. He should have known what he felt with the boy and the crow were the same. Should have seen that, impossible as it was, it was just one friend he was longing for, not two.

“I had to want to be human again,” Daichi says. “But I couldn’t be the one to wish it.”

“But _I_ could,” Suga says.

“If you really meant it,” Daichi says with a little nod, cheeks flushing again.

Suga sinks back down to his knees, and Daichi lowers himself in front of him, blanket bunched around him, soft between Suga’s fingers when he rests his hand on Daichi’s lap.

“You can stay then?” he asks. “Like this? With...with me?”

Daichi takes Suga’s hand, strong, brown fingers wrapped firmly around it, and his touch brings that same warmth that always washed over Suga with the brush of the crow’s wings.

“If you want me to,” Daichi says. “I’m free again, I can be both of my selves.”

Suga smiles, thinking of impossibly smooth feathers under his palms, and the safety and beauty of enormous wings spread above him.

“I want you to,” he says. “Any way you want to be, I just...want you with me.”

“I should probably stick with this body, for school, at least,” Daichi says. “I want to be where you are.”

Happy tears blur Suga's vision, and he laughs when Daichi brushes a thumb over his cheek before he can do it himself, in the same way he’s touched him gently before with the tips of his wings.

If Daichi is with Suga, the city will be a different world than he'd expected. The sharp lines of high-rises and unfamiliarity will be softened by the rich timbre of Daichi's voice, the hints of rainbows gleaming in his hair.

Suga will hold fast to his friend’s hand, and neither one of them will be alone.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Essie for all your help editing this. And thank you for reading!
> 
> Find me [here](http://ellessey-writes.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr!


End file.
